Akrasia as a character trait

AKRASIA AS A CHARACTER TRAIT

Say you judge it is best not too spill too much water, yet you keep taking longer showers than you hold best. In that case you act akratically, that is, you act against your better judgment. In philosophy, akrasia raises two problems. Contemporary philosophers approach akrasia mainly as a logical puzzle. How can someone at the moment of action judge it best to act in a certain way, but act otherwise? Ancient and medieval philosophers primarily approached akrasia as a moral problem. They considered it, for example, a character trait that prevents someone from leading a good life. I claim that it is fruitful to regard akrasia as a character trait in contemporary philosophical discussions as well.

The contemporary literature on akrasia is almost exclusively preoccupied with the logical puzzle of how a single and isolated akratic action is possible. This dissertation is deliberately not meant as a contribution to solving this logical puzzle. Although it is an interesting philosophical problem, it fails to address a very significant issue: people can, and typically do, act against their better judgment repeatedly. In this dissertation, I therefore focus on akrasia as a character trait. Building on the work of Aristotle, I show that it is very much worthwhile to approach akrasia as a character trait, because a character approach captures the repetitive nature and moral status of akrasia. This does justice to akrasia as it is of most concern in everyday life.

Dissertation: http://hdl.handle.net/11370/ec6d27de-cc07-4a79-9354-33bdd81e5533